You don’t meet interesting people at the Holiday Inn Express. The best motel rooms for a good conversation cost less than fifty dollars.
Sarah and Pradeep are on vacation, traveling the country in his Porsche. The Grand Central Motel in Ely, Nevada is a $65 room in a building with a cant to the floors, a potholed asphalt and gravel parking lot, and a cold water spigot in the shower that doesn’t work. They each held a goblet of red wine and puffed my weed as we chatted.
They’re from Victoria, Canada. Sarah is forty-eight and walks dogs for a living. Pradeep was born in Kuwait, the son of an oil worker, schooled at the foreign encampment until middle school; he went to high school and college in India where he earned his Doctorate in Psychiatry, and spent his career working in Canada as a psychiatrist. He’s sixty-nine and retired.
They invited me to dinner, the Prospector Hotel & Gambling Hall was a good walk. Sara had a sixteen ounce sirloin well done, a baked potato and three beers. Pradeep’s diabetic and had a salad and two glasses of casino red. He explained to her that Morocco is a country in Africa.
They’ve been together for twelve years, both divorced, no kids. I asked them why they weren’t married and she assured me that they were trying, they almost got married last year; Pradeep had a family emergency. They’re going to try again this year. She nudged him while she described the plan, Pradeep picked at his lettuce and the conversation moved on to motorcycles.
Canadians don’t like us. Our products are now labeled on grocery shelves and boycotted. Friends were appalled that they would spend money in their reviled southern neighbor. I told Pradeep about seeing a dozen men with rifles forcing two dark-complected men onto their stomachs in a bar ditch in Montana. He assured me that no one would mistake him for a Muslim. “Those guys in Montana didn’t look like muslims, either.” He bought me dinner.
In the morning as we said our goodbyes, she gave me Pradeep’s phone number, “He won’t turn it on until we get home.”
I rode my motorcycle to Portland, Oregon to visit my brother, Greg. Greg has dementia. Dementia is a terminal condition.
Waiting for the pilot car at one of the many long Montana road construction sites, the guy in front of me got out of his car and I took off my helmet. He was on his way to Walmart. His job, he told me, is to teach Walmart employees to merchandize books, “The money’s in hardcover. We have less than four feet of paperbacks.” I said, “I like a paperback.” “To be honest, me, too. The only hardcovers in my bookcase are Stephen King.” He was tall, thin and sixties and wore a voluptuous grey 10-speed handlebar mustache.
Following the Columbia River into Portland, the wind pushes the bike around so that I have to pay attention and there are whitecaps on the water. Greg wind surfed that river for many years with great skill and passion. He had a Ford van full of boards and sails.
The difficulty with loss is that it’s so ordinary. The words have all been written. For Greg, there is no happy ending. Things will not get better. The avid hiker shuffles short steps. His balance is tenuous. He doesn’t see the ducks, he can’t follow a pointed finger. There is no trial medication or treatment in Mexico. There is no hope. There is only sadness and guilt, guilt that it isn’t me watching lacrosse on the big screen while my housemate snores beside me.
The Military Police brought us home in their jeep when I was four and Greg was two. Dad was a captain in the Army stationed at Fort Ord. We lived on post. They caught us at the main gate, a mile or more from home; we were holding hands, going to the beach on Monterey Bay. We were barefoot, Greg was in diapers. That’s who we became.
As we sat on the couch, I asked him, “Greg, do you know who I am?” He stared into my eyes for many, many seconds and I stared back. The disease has turned his eyes a pale sky blue, almost a grey, the bright Norwegian-blue eyes he got from Mom are faded and gone. He never answered my question.
In his stare I looked for him. There’s a temptation to romanticize, “He’s still in there,” I say to myself, I want so badly for it to be that day again when the jokes were worn and the conversation easy. But that’s about me, not him; it’s about my own struggle with finality, my inability to cope with the void, with infinity, with my own frailty and pending death. The empathy is horrifying. As we walked, we passed a guy with a yapping Chihuahua on a leash. I said under my breath, “The only good thing about a Chihuahua is that it’ll fit in a garbage disposal.” He chuckled, maybe in response to my quip. There’s no knowing.
Greg has been kicked out of two assisted living homes for his violence, a common symptom of dementia. His rage is there. You can see it in his fists and rigid 90-degree elbows, you can feel it in his shoulders, you know it when you say, “Greg, this way” over and over and he keeps walking toward his own destination. His anger exists, it seems, as a vestige of a previous life appalled at what’s become. I tried to engage him with kid memories, peacocks at Mooney’s Grove, hiking Snake Lady’s Wall, sneaking into the county fair, surfing the early morning sets at the Eleventh Street beach, stealing Dad’s Opel summer nights, pushing it down the street before we started it and riding the dirt roads of Black Mountain with all the friends we could fit in the backseat. He was silent. What are shared memories when they’re no longer shared?
When I was thirty and Greg was twenty-eight, we rode motorcycles around the world; SE Asia, Australia, Nepal, India, the African continent, Europe. My wife Meredith and I lived in Tokyo during the boom-boom economy of the early nineteen eighties and we bought two Hondas for the trip and then a third. The ride took thirteen months. It was the kind of life experience you enter as one person and come out someone new. Greg came away with a great skepticism for the dictums of capitalism, for money as purpose. He worked, he made a living, he raised Morgan and Madeline, my wonderful nephew and niece. But he recognized something I’ve only learned of late. And maybe it wasn’t the trip, maybe he just knew. Greg has lived life on his terms; travel, windsurfing, hiking, camping. He taught his kids to love life, to love people, to accept risk, to stand up straight and go for it. That’s his legacy. He remodeled kitchens when he had time.
Greg’s is a life to celebrate and even now, as the path narrows, he still, every once in a while, when you’re not looking, twitches the half-smile that inevitably preceded his snark. I knew that smile when we tried to escape Fort Ord. I love my brother and I miss him.
I’m riding from Minneapolis to Portland, Oregon to visit Greg, my brother.
Long travel on a motorcycle gives you time in your head. Nothing to brake your thought, to infringe on your psychic wander except the feel of the day, now cooler now warmer, the splat-crunches as bugs hit the fairing, the arthritis in my left shoulder settling in, not going away but settling in, the ache easing. I rest my elbow on my thigh to give it a break.
On the two-page spread in the Rand McNally atlas, the miles of bright blue North Dakota interstate turn grey as the road shrinks into farm country. Orange topsoil from the green Deeres tractoring the land on both sides fogs the road and the smell of the dirt fills my sinuses and I lick the grit on my teeth and feel the wind pushing it down my neck and turning my long underwear the color of the land.
Pairs of wooden power poles mark my road, sixty feet tall with a timber cross-member and X-bracing between to hold them straight and true. All very much as they should be. This is a god’s country. And once you’re on the grey two lanes, the traffic spaces out and the surface is mostly good and the speed limit is sixty-five and I push it by ten and the carpet of turned soils drops off the horizons all around.
The farm equipment in North Dakota is big and slow but on the long, straight road clear to the horizon, passing them by is easy. There are lots of mobile homes out here and rusty cars with a worn spare tire holding them off the road. A Help Wanted sign at my dinner diner, “All Positions Available.” My burger, fries and chocolate shake are delivered without incident; a tall teenager with black roots under orange big-city hair, an earring, well-built sentences and an easy laugh. He won’t be here long.
The rear suspension on the Harley spanks my butt. There are aftermarket shock absorbers; for a thousand bucks, it feels like a bargain. And the steady mumble of the engine and the constant inputs to the handlebars; everything needs an input, a dip, an oil stain, a bit of shredded tread from a recapped truck tire, a nudge to the right for a passing Kenworth, the constant armwrestling with hard-muscled winds from the south; the inputs, the inputs, I can feel them in my shoulder but it’s settling in. Gas is ninety-one octane at the Kwik Trip; we’re getting just under ten miles per quart in the heavy breeze.
The Harley’s a nanny bike, it protects and entertains. Flicking through the screens on the dash, I know how fast, how cold, how far I’ve come and how far I have to go, the time, my altitude above sea level and when to turn left. It gives me maps and pictures of my exits, brightly colored warnings when I’m low on fuel or there’s an upcoming road project. It warns me about red light cameras and when I cross a state line, a pulsing orange banner cautions me about Next State helmet laws. When the speed limit drops without warning from seventy to twenty-five for some tiny western town, it’s right there saving me a ticket in flashing yellow. It even yells at me when I miss a turn. It’s all brain sugar, something to tickle the neurons while I wait for the horizon to arrive and the dashed yellow lines flick under my left boot. And it distracts me from my shoulder. My room at the Days Inn in Minot was $67.00 plus tax. Business must be soft.
There was a construction crew staying at the Days Inn. They parked their truck next to the bike. I nodded and said “Hey” and the guy in front, a guy my age, a guy who knew his business, looked at me and nodded back, “¿Cómo estás?”; his voice was tired, a construction guys’ moment. I thought about him the next day as I passed a dozen or more cars jumble-stopped in the traffic lane of a bumfuck eastern Montana town, doors open, emergency lights flashing. Traffic was at a crawl as we eased through the congestion and I watched as men in military outfits pointing rifles and yelling forced two men — dark hair, dark skin, green polo shirts — to lie face down in the bar ditch. Most of the cars didn’t have police markings.
And as the clouds skud across the blue I think about my brother Greg, Greg and his dementia, Greg, best friend and constant companion growing up. In the last six months, he’s been kicked out of two nursing homes for violence. This is the third. I hope he recognizes me.
I was thinking. The America we grew up in won’t survive the next few years. The broad destruction of the federal government, the gross theft of public resources, the broad dismissal of expertise and experience, the greed, the disdain for law, the self-serving quality of the little man, his sycophants and fellow Republicans and, most significantly, the rage and naivete of their voters and the entitlement and irresponsibility of the ninety million people who didn’t vote. The people we elected are in way over their heads and the results of their incompetence and greed are going to be horrific.
When, in several years, we look around at our failed state and what’s left of our planet, we will be ready for a new American ethos, one that isn’t promoted by our oligarchs, our industries, our military, our technologies or the Kardashians; I propose that our new ethos be that of Universal Wellbeing, a national guarantee of food, housing, medical care, education, safety, and contemplation for every American (by “contemplation,” I mean the time and opportunity to pursue a spirituality); an America that takes pride in the wellbeing of its citizenry and is offended and embarrassed by a citizen deprived.
Merriam-Webster defines freedom as “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.” We Americans talk about it as though it’s unique to us, as though citizens of Denmark, South Korea, Australia, England, Japan, Norway, France, Canada, and a whole bunch of other countries spend their lives in chains. They don’t. But the poor in America, our fellow citizens, do. Our fellow Americans struggle for food, housing, medical care, education and physical safety. We need to redefine those things as necessities, as the foundational rights of every citizen. Without them, by definition, our fellow Americans are not free; because poverty places constraints on choice and action. Today, forty million American men, women and children are living without freedom. That number is growing and will continue to grow.
I envision an America that takes offense at poverty and takes responsibility for it; an America that recognizes that poverty is a danger to all of society, a waste of human talent, and a waste of money spent in response to the effects of hunger, lack of housing, lack of medical care and all the rest. America needs to treat lack of wellbeing like a house fire: trained professionals show up, put out the fire and treat the injured, and that help is paid for and is the responsibility of the state, of all of us. Our future success as a society and as a country, if it is ever to occur, demands that we reconsider our ethos, that we spend our tax dollars on people. We can afford it. We’ll simply tax the rich like we used to do.
We, as a society on the road to ruin, need to start thinking about what’s next, after the criminals and sycophants are dead, in prison or otherwise removed from seats of power, and the millions who voted for the little man are looking at the wreckage of their country and replaying in their memories the lies, tinny arguments and easy solutions they voted for and with that reflection, reconsidering the role of the state in assuring wellbeing. Because they, like the rest of us, are going to need it.
On my flight home from Morocco, the long leg, Casablanca to Montreal, I had a bulkhead seat and 370 movies to choose from. Bridget Jones’s Baby, Alien, Batman Returns, Back to the Future II and III, A Bug’s Life, Forrest Gump, Glory, Million Dollar Baby, The Green Mile, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery; they were all there, just waiting for me to point and press.
It’s a seven-hour flight and I read my novel as long as I could stand it and then I scrolled the movies. Besides the movies, there were 650 “shows;” that’s over 1000 ways of piloting yourself through the airplane noise and stink, your sore butt and cramped legs, and the silent wrestling match with the person in the seat beside you over armrest justice. I’d smile and brace my elbow when I passed him his coffee or his chicken taco and he’d smirk back, pressing my arm for advantage while I was off balance.
The movie Casablanca was an option; it’s my favorite movie. My favorite scene takes place in Rick’s Café: Yvonne, a young French woman with her heart beating for Rick, proprietor and our American hero, waltzes into the scene and allows German Soldiers to buy her drinks to court his jealousy. A German soldier sits at the piano and bangs the keys while his fellow countrymen, led by Major Strasse (the perfect evilist), thump the piano with their clenched fists and sing Die Wacht am Rhein. In response, hero and idealist, Victor stands in front of the band and commands they play La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. The scene becomes a North Africa battlefront, the Germans in their synchronized male voices and well-cut uniforms arrayed in a tight battle group against the trombone, trumpet, drums and guitar, the many mouths open wide in shared song, the suits and long dresses, the white police uniforms, led by the idealist in his white tuxedo, overwhelm the Germans in beauty, numbers, volume and passion. As the tears run down Yvonne’s cheeks, they run down mine. Viva la France!
The problem with Casablanca is that it is a celebration of a war-besieged 1942 America and was shot when the outcome was unclear. The main character, Rick, outcast and rejected lover, damaged but tough, represents an America of ideals and courage in the midst of war, an America that stares into the future confident and unafraid. It’s an America that doesn’t exist anymore; we’ve become instead the fist-pounders belting out our nationalism, bullying the world, and using the tools of state to shut down resistance (the next scene in the movie). I wish we liberals were playing the part of Yvonne, that we were the resistance. But we’re not. We don’t have her tears. We don’t have her courage. We don’t have her passion. We don’t have her voice. We certainly don’t have her acting ability. Nor are we the tough idealist that is Rick, the courageous Nazi antagonist that is Victor (who can’t contain his outrage over even a bar song), or even the cynical yet patriotic French policeman, Captain Renault with his bemused smile and peccadillos.
Instead, I watched American Graffiti. The actors, the cars, the street scenes, the dialog, it’s the safe, confident, pretty America I grew up in; it’s who we used to be. The questions the movie wrestles with are the questions of of an idyllic youth; what should we do tonight, who’s dating who, whose car is faster, college or no, where do we get some booze; all with Wolfman Jack as our narrator and conscience over a playlist that includes Only You, Party Doll, Peppermint Twist, At the Hop, The book of Love, Do You Want to Dance, Why do Fools Fall In Love, Goodnight, Well It’s Time to Go, and all the rest. The fights and wrecked cars, the money stolen from the pinball machines, the teenage stunt that wrecked a police car resolve themselves quickly and neatly and don’t derail the narrative; they are instead absorbed as the unremarkable antics of youth. It’s a movie about ideals, confidence and identity; the answers to the existential questions are obvious and go without saying. In 1962, American young people believed in America. I watched it again when I got home.
